Legal issues regarding the Celebration of Seagrove Potters

Date: August 12, 2008

From: Nancy Quinn, Attorney at Law, For the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery
To: The Honorable Mike Walker, Mayor of Seagrove and the Seagrove Town Council

Re: Legal issues regarding the Celebration of Seagrove Potters


The Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery respectfully asks the Seagrove Town Council to take appropriate steps to clarify its position on the Celebration of Seagrove Potters so that issues potentially subject to court review will become ripe for adjudication before preparations go much further in a state of continuing uncertainty.

At the end of June, 2008, the Town of Seagrove approved an application from Ben Owen III for a Street Vendor License.

Article 2,Section 2.1(2)(a) and (b) requires that Applications for a street vendor license shall include (a) The name, permanent address and phone number of the applicant, and (b) the name, permanent address and phone number of the vendor if different.

Mr. Owen’s application did not indicate that the Vendor’s identity was any different from the Applicant’s, so either Ben Owen III is the Applicant or his Application is fatally defective for not providing information clearly required by the ordinance.

One potter authorized to display and sell his wares at the Historic Luck’s Bean Plant in Seagrove does not a pottery festival make.

Until enough potters are approved by the Town of Seagrove to hold a second pottery festival in town or a non-profit organization to sponsor such an event is accepted and approved by the Town, the possibility of Ben Owen III selling his pottery at that time and place would appear not to rise to a level actionable at law.

According to Article 2, Section 2.1(1) (a), “A license issued by the Town of Seagrove shall be required of all street vendors operating within the town limits.”

Subsection 1.5(1) defines a Street Vendor as “Any person [emphasis added] who engages in a temporary business whereby he/she transports an inventory of goods to a building, vacant lot or other location and who, at that location displays the goods for sale and sales the goods at retail or offers the goods for sale at retail.”


Under 6) Special Events (if applicable) of his Application, Mr. Owen wrote “Festival of Seagrove Potters.”

The “Festival of Seagrove Potters” is not a public event “celebrated and recognized by the Town of Seagrove.” (See 1.5(3) and Article 4, which recognizes only the Southern Randolph County Days as a Special Event Recognized by the Town of Seagrove.

The “Festival of Seagrove Potters” is not a natural person or an entity that enjoys legal recognition of any sort. Indeed, the name under which this second pottery festival now seeks to operate has been changed to “Celebration of Seagrove Potters.”

Article 2, Section 2.1(6) provides that “A street vendor license is not transferable.”

Ben Owen III therefore cannot transfer his Street Vendor License to any other person, much less to an organization that lacks legal standing and whose very name and supervision appears to be in a state of constant flux and possibly even of willful misinformation.

For any other potter to acquire a legitimate permit to sell at the Celebration of Seagrove Potters, or whatever it will be called by November 22 and 23, 2008, he or she must comply with the provisions of Article 2, Section 2.1(2)(i) which requires, “An application fee of $15.00. No application fee is required for a vending operation or any vendor operating under a non-profit sponsor where one hundred (100%) percent of the proceeds less the operating costs are to benefit a local charity or civic, non-profit purpose.

Not only must each potter apply for a permit and pay said application fee, but must also comply with the provisions of Article2, Section 2.1(7) and pay a licensing fee: “A general vendor license shall be available upon payment of a $15.00 street vendor’s license tax and approval of a street vendor application by the Town of Seagrove Board of Commissioners. No street vendor’s license tax shall be collected for a vending operation or any vendor operating under a non-profit sponsor where 100 (100%) percent of the proceeds less the operations costs are to benefit a local charity or civic, non-profit purpose.”

The Town of Seagrove Board of Commissioners is bound by its own enactments to consider several issues before granting a street vendor license to any party.

Under Article 1, Section 1.2 Statement of Purpose, it is established that “The purpose of this ordinance is to allow vendors to operate in such a manner as to promote [emphasis added] the Town’s economic and social activities.”

For 26 years, the Seagrove Pottery Festival as it has been produced by the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery has been one of the largest economic and social activities occurring in Seagrove proper. If the stated purpose of the street vendor ordinances in the Town of Seagrove were followed, the standard for approving any other event to be held at the same time would have to be that such event proves that it will “promote” the Seagrove Pottery Festival.

Article 2, Section 2.1(b) requires the Board of Commissioners to deny an application for a street vendor’s license if it finds or concludes “5) that the proposed vending operation does interfere with a previously approved vending operation….”

The Seagrove Pottery Festival is “a previously approved vending operation” of 26 years duration and, in fact, the permit allowing the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery to hold the 27th Annual Seagrove Pottery Festival was approved before the Commissioners ever took up the matter of allowing Ben Owen III to sell his pottery at the Luck’s Bean Plant on November 22 and 23.

A press release issued by the Celebration of Seagrove Potters on August 10, 2008, began: “Seagrove Area Potters Association, a group of artists who formed in 2003, recently voted to merge with the area's newest organization to promote the potters of Seagrove and the new group's upcoming festival. Association members will join forces with the newly formed Celebration of Seagrove Potters to host the pottery event Nov. 22 and 23 at the historic Luck's Bean plant in Seagrove on Hwy. 705.”

The Seagrove Area Potters Association is otherwise known as SAPA.

Ben Owen III, the Applicant and only street vendor presently authorized to sell at this supposedly new pottery festival, has offered comments on the public record that are inconsistent with other assertions made by potters who are identified as playing leading roles in creating this second festival and with factual developments as they have recently unfolded:

“The group is not formally organized, but will operate as an arm of a nonprofit organization, which cannot be announced until that organization’s board meets.”
Owen emphasized that neither the N.C. Pottery Center nor the Seagrove Area Potters Association (SAPA) was involved with the second festival.
From the Asheboro Courier-Tribune for 6/13/08, quoting Ben Owen III.

Compare this to comments made by Paul Ray in an e-mail dated July 18, 2008 and shared with dozens of local potters: “It was announced at one of the first meetings, the Celebration of Seagrove Potters will fall under the umbrella of SAPA.”

The Board of Commissioners should require Ben Owen III to come forth and clarify his comments that now appear potentially to have been deliberately meant to mislead. Either he had a qualified non-profit organization in mind at the time he spoke and that organization was neither the Pottery Center nor SAPA, or he misled the public.

In any event, SAPA is not a non-profit organization. It is classified under the Internal Revenue Code as a 501(c)(6) and not a 501(c)(3) organization.

Therefore, if SAPA is indeed the intended sponsor of this second festival, every potter who intends to participate in it would still have to pay to apply for a permit and pay for a license.

Furthermore, the Seagrove Board of Commissioners would have to approve or disapprove of each such application based on the law as written in Seagrove.

Everybody who has dealt with these issues either knows or certainly should know that the Celebration of Seagrove Potters is intended to further the agenda of some potters, mostly from Moore County, to destroy the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery and to hurt the Seagrove Pottery Festival.

Sally Larson is the president of SAPA. In an e-mail directed to Linda Loggains, the President of the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery, dated June 21, 2008, Ms. Larson stated: “What I’m most worried about is the further division among the potters which will ultimately hurt everyone. There could be nothing worse than two really weak festivals in our area, all the promotional groundwork you have done throughout the years will be damaged beyond repair and everyone will suffer.”

If, now, SAPA is in charge of the new festival and it will be under Ms. Larson’s leadership, how can she possibly explain away her prior stated belief that two festivals at the same time and in the same place would “damage beyond repair” years of promotional effort by the Museum, with the result that “everyone will suffer?”

And, if such concerns were legitimate for Ms. Larson to express earlier, are they not legitimate for the Seagrove Town Council to consider in relation to the propriety of permitting a second festival to occur on the same weekend as the Seagrove Pottery Festival has always been held.

Mayor Walker himself appears to have gone on the public record to acknowledge that the second festival will unavoidably hurt the first: “When you pull 60 or more potters from the one festival, it's going to make a difference," he said. Attendance is probably going to go down for everybody." Mayor Walker quoted in the Triad Business Journal, July 4, 2008.

Accordingly, it would be unlawful for the Board of Commissioners to authorize a competing festival.

Furthermore, it is a matter susceptible to further investigation and proof that leading figures in creating this new festival have expressed their intent “to squash the Museum like a bug” and to “destroy the Seagrove Pottery Festival.”

The comments they have made on the subject flatly contradict the stated intentions, motivation and expectations they spin in public and through press releases.

Mayor Walker himself must regard allowing a competing festival on the same weekend as some sort of intentional punishment of the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery for refusing to bow to the pressure he tried to bring to bear upon Linda Loggains when he told her that the Museum would have to remove one of its members, Don Hudson, immediately or he would see to it that the other group received a permit to hold a competing festival.

Should the truth of such an assertion be established, such a heavy-handed attempt to intimidate the Museum would have to be regarded as actionable and would ipso facto establish that the competing festival was meant to hurt, not to promote, a previously approved event.

But, as said before, one potter selling at the Historic Luck’s Bean Plant does not a pottery festival make.

If and when the Board of Commissioners authorizes enough potters to create a second festival or identifies and recognizes a legitimate non-profit with the ability to create such a festival, the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery reserves all of its rights to file suit to require a Writ of Mandamus to be issued for the Town of Seagrove to enforce its own ordinances and to seek injunctive relief forbidding such a festival to go forward on the grounds that it was created with the intent of damaging the original Seagrove Pottery Festival and that it would clearly have such an effect.

In pursuit of these remedies, the Museum would expect to be able to utilize all legitimate tools of legal discovery in order to obtain documents, recordings and to compel that statements be given under oath in support of its case and to establish grounds for appropriate relief to be granted.